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Poster: Scoop56 Date: Apr 13, 2012 5:00pm
Forum: web Subject: Why can site owners erase history?

I'm sure this question has been asked and answered several times before, but I could not find anything resembling a full answer, so let me pose the question again and hope someone directs me to an answer.

Why does the Wayback Machine allow website owners, as a matter of course, to pull material that had been broadcast publicly online from the public record and deny the future world infinitely valuable records of historic fact?

I can see some reasons why it might be appropriate to allow people to erase records on a case-by-case basis — a minor posting naked photographs on a publicly available web page, a page that hackers broke into and vandalized — but I cannot see any why people should be allowed to erase historic record, on a whim, as a matter of course, without giving good reason.

In most cases I have seen on this site, the only conceivable reason site owners have chosen against indexing is to hide misdeeds: to prevent customers from seeing how much prices have increased, or to hide a blog post expressing an opinion they'd like to deny advocating or camouflage a promise they don't feel like keeping.

Once you do something in public — and the Internet is public — you shouldn't get to deny doing it, assuming you were an adult in full possession of your faculties when you did it.

What on earth is the counter-argument?

Is there an Internet archive that keeps pages regardles of no-crawls?

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Poster: jonc Date: Apr 14, 2012 9:12pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: Why can site owners erase history?

Well, basically, the content out there is copyrighted. I don't think IA wants to deal with the flood of lawsuits it would entail.

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Poster: Scoop56 Date: Apr 15, 2012 5:20pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: Why can site owners erase history?

That seems very odd to me, though I'm not a copyright lawyer. It would seem that the instant you publish something on the Internet and make it freely available to world, you'd lose the right to exert that sort of control over it.

I'm not saying that you should lose all rights — like the right to stop others from selling material that you created — but I would think you'd lose the right to make it private again and prevent the IA from simply making a record of what existed.

Again, though, I'm not a copyright lawyer and I realize I cannot trust my gut on this. Do you know for a fact that copyright considerations explain why the IA allows no-indexing — is it written anywhere officially or by an IA official in another forum — or is this merely your supposition?

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Poster: Manatha Date: Apr 30, 2012 6:30pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: Why can site owners erase history?

Unless I'm mistaken, Web owners retain intellectual rights to anything they post online - I believe that means it's covered by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

I believe, that's why retaining anything they don't want you to could get you in trouble, because the site owner still has that intellectual right to the content.

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Poster: hezzy.hill@yahoo.com Date: May 17, 2012 9:51am
Forum: web Subject: Re: Why can site owners erase history?

My site history is erased. It used to be there, I've seen it. Now it's gone from the wayback machine. I was the owner, and I didn't ask for it to be removed. How do I get it back?